How to enable the new Holographic Shell under build 14986

You might know that Microsoft is planning to create a new Windows Holographic shell for the desktop, that you’ll be able to run in the future using a Head Mounted Display (HMD), but did you know the whole shell is already here and fully working in build 14986?

In this story you’ll learn how to enable that new Holographic Shell.

Prerequisites:

You’ll need to have a Desktop PC running the 14986 Insider Preview.

A working internet connection to download the Microsoft Hololens App from here

First, in build 14896, open the app called “Windows Holographic First Run”, at the welcome page, click next, then click the Developer Mode button, which should be like this:

At this stage, Windows should start installing the Holographic Feature on Demand package, should be quick enough.

Open the Registry editor (regedit) and set the following registry value:

After adding this registry value (dword 32 bit), re-open the Windows Holographic app, you should get the following UI:

Go to the For developers page by clicking the link in the hamburger menu of the app, and enable “Simulation”.

Install the Microsoft Hololens app into your computer via the following link

Enable Device Portal on your computer, you can temporarily disable authentication which will make the following steps easier.

Open the Microsoft Hololens app, tap on Add device, and enter your computer IP address, then tap connect, the connection will fail, but you should start seeing some HoloShell bits in the Windows Holographic window, such as Welcome:

Then just press the Windows Key on your keyboard while being in the app and that should be it.

Be sure to tell us in the comment section if everything did go well, or any problem you encountered while following this tutorial, and have a fun time while messing around with Windows Holographic on desktop.